Taking a Look at the Different Types of Cryptocurrency Available on the Market Today

Virtual currency or cryptocurrency is a trending investment asset and payment nowadays. This is because there is an overwhelming interest from investors to invest their hard-earned money on cryptocurrencies. Investors have developed a preference for cryptocurrency instead of retirement plans, mutual funds and penny stocks.

Types of cryptocurrency

The world of cryptocurrency is evolving quite fast and this has led to the emergence of new types of cryptocurrency on the market, these include the following:

It can be described as a computing platform that is decentralized and features a smart contract functionality. It mainly offers a kind of decentralized virtual machine called Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). EVM executes peer-to-peer contracts with the help of a cryptocurrency called ether. Multiple users can be comfortably accommodated on the Ethereum platform regarding smart contracts. Ethereum allows people to conduct business with strangers because all the necessary terms are outlined inside a smart contract deep in the blockchain.

Ripple

This is a remittance network, real-time currency exchange as well as a settlement system. It provides users with international payments that are low-cost, certain and instant. It is built on XRP i.e. open source Internet protocol and native currency that is decentralized. It is also referred to as the Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP) or Ripple protocol. It utilizes a consensus process to every remittance, exchange as well as payments in distributed process.

Litecoin

This is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that was released under MIT/X11 license. Litecoin currency is almost identical to the popular bitcoin in technical terms and is inspired by it. Both its transfer and formation have an open source protocol as its basis. Yahoo had this chart to show on their latest bit.

Dash

This cryptocurrency was initially known as Darkcoin. It provides a high level of privacy because it operates on a type of distributed mastercode network which is characterized by dealings that are close to untraceable. It was launched in the year 2014. Evan Duffield is responsible for creating and developing it.

Peercoin

It is also referred to as PPCoin. Sunny King and Scott Nadal are the software developers that created it. This digital currency is the first to utilize to use a combination of proof-of-stake and proof-of-work. Initially, the proof-of-work hashing process is used to mine the coins. Find out more on the Economic Times.Users get rewarded with coins using the proof-of-stake algorithm as the hashing difficulty increases over time. This algorithm needs very minimal energy in order to generate blocks.

Bitcoin

This digital currency was created by Satoshi Nakamoto. It can be utilized in purchasing items either electronically or locally. It is possible for new user to use it without necessarily understanding every one of its technical details. After a bitcoin wallet is installed either on a computer or mobile phone, it generates the first Bitcoin address thus allowing the user to generate more if required. Bitcoins once generated, can be used for all manner of actual transactions. Countries like Indonesia looking to ban all cryptocurrencies can be read about here.

Ven

This global digital currency is designed to facilitate trade amongst the members of the Hub Culture. It was launched in the year 2007 with the aim of decreasing the risk of economic inflation. Its value is solely determined on financial markets from several carbon futures, currencies and commodities.

Chinacoin

This digital currency is based on Litecoin. It utilizes the scrypt key derivation function that is based on passwords. It is currently being generated in form of 60-second blocks and this happens at approximately 88 coins per block.

Primecoin

Sunny King is credited for developing this cryptocurrency. Prime numbers are what build its proof-of-work. This means that it is different from the conventional system of Hashcash that is utilized by several cryptocurrencies that are built on the renowned Bitcoin framework.

Dogecoin

It was launched in the year 2013 and is significantly based on Bitcoin protocol. However, it should be noted that it features a few modifications. Dogecoin employs scrypt technology as its proof-of-work scheme. It has a block time of 60 seconds. The generation of Dogecoin lacks a limit but it deals with numerous coins that have little value when assessed individually. Therefore, it is ideal for smaller transactions.

Conclusion

Although there are different types of cryptocurrency, few are actually relevant. The list above contains some of the important ones. Other notable ones are Zcash and Monero. These currencies are affecting money, business and the world at large. Cryptocurrencies are regarded as payment techniques of the future but as to how many will survive the cut-throat competition remains to be seen.